Atlas
by Tsukiyomi the Kami
Summary: It's an infinite game of cat and mouse, and Jiraiya isn't exactly sure which one he is. Oneshot, Jiraiyacentric, slightly onesided JiraiyaTsunade.


Um... It's two in the morning, and I'm typing this shit up while listening to the bands yellow Generation, Ajikan, L'Arc-En-Ciel, and Nightmare, and I'm starting to think the key to good angsty writing is sleep deprivation.

So here you go. My first one-shot.

"_I am very old this day,  
I was living before my birth,  
I remember yonder oak tree,_

_an acorn in the earth."  
_- Excerpt from the Llfaeyon Changeling, a folktale concerning faerie-folk.

**Atlas  
**_It's an infinite game of cat and mouse, and Jiraiya's not exactly sure which one he is. _Oneshot, Jiraiyacentric, slightly one-sided JiraiyaTsunade.

Jiraiya is naturally a self-preserving man.

He's carrying the weight of a thousand regrets that have occurred all over the world and by the time he's fifty-one and has another brat to train to don the mantle of the Hokage, he thinks he's seen it all. He's not quite sure though, and as he watches a familiar set of events play by again, and roughly comforts Naruto when he's been rejected the second time this day, the feeling of nostalgia sets in.

-

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When he sets his eyes apon his golden-haired teammate at seven-years-old, he's completely infatuated and doesn't exactly know what to say. So he settles for being silent, staring at her not-too-subtly before looking away and deciding that he'd better leaver her alone- she's the Shodai's granddaughter. What would she want with him?

That's a good thing, because she's busy gazing at Orochimaru, an immature crush misting over her honey-colored eyes, and Jiraiya's a little jealous, or maybe more than a little, because who would ever want to be with someone who resembled a snake so much?

It doesn't occur to him that he's seven too, and that maybe this aching in his heart might just be an immature crush like the one she has on their other teammate.

-

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But it isn't, and the next time he can remember looking at her like that, he's ten and she's barely eleven and she's healing up a horrible gash he'd gotten from an enemy Chuunin with an irritated expression on her face.

He looks up at her as if she were god, and she doesn't seem to quite appreciate the gesture, because in the next moment he can remember a crack, and his cheek stinging terribly and her stalking off to Orochimaru, no doubt to flirt and attempt to flaunt her slowly-enlarging bust size.

Jiraiya doesn't know what he did wrong.

-

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The first time seventeen-year-old Jiraiya lifts his two exhausted teammates over his shoulders after a particularly grueling mission, he thinks he's lucky to have such great friends who really care about him, and such wonderful shinobi to watch his back, and he's not quite sure why he's still conscious but not them, but he thinks it had something to do with the way Tsunade screamed as she was engulfed by a Katon jutsu, or perhaps how Orochimaru was hit over the temple gracelessly with a blood-encrusted katana.

And as he sets the two of them down under the shelter of a tree so that he can rest up a little, he knows that maybe, just _maybe_, he's lying to himself.

He leans up against the tree-trunk, one foot resting flat against it, and bows his head like the sleepy soldier that he is. He reasons that he can think about that kind of stuff when he wants to- which he understands will be never.

-

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Jiraiya is twenty-four the next time he has to cart his teammates' bodies somewhere, but it's for entirely different reasons.

Sarutobi-sensei has just been inaugurated as the Sandaime Hokage, and Orochimaru and Tsunade have gotten themselves stone-faced hammered. Jiraiya knew he couldn't leave the blond and the brunette just lying on the floor of the jounin lounge, mumbling incoherent soliloquys to themselves as they indulged themselves in a restless slumber.

He wonders how it always happens that he carries them back to their homes, and he decides he doesn't really care. They're his teammates, by god, and he's going to help them.

Still, it's really quite unfair for him to have to be deprived of sake because of it. He has things he needs to forget as well, and watching Tsunade ignore him from eyes outside his own makes him a bit more jaded to it all.

-

-

The village is attacked soon after Sandaime's acceptance of the Hokage title, and Nawaki is as obstinately aggressive as ever.

And so he dies.

Jiraiya would have saved him, would have tried, if only just to win that place in her heart, but he was so caught up in protecting his newly-gained Genin disciples, and fending off enemies for other jounin, he didn't have the chance.

But since she's depressed now, and she snaps at Orochimaru's snide remarks, and welcomes Jiraiya's gentle hugs, mistaking him for a friend she can turn to, a shoulder she can spill her tears apon.

He's getting hopeful, is thinking that maybe she'll start liking him the way he likes her, and gently ushers her into his arms whenever his eyes mist over.

He knows he's lucky, for this to have happened, but not _too _lucky, because if he was that fortunate, then he'd have no trouble in getting Tsunade to declare everlasting love. For now, he thinks he's stuck to extremely subtle coercion.

Jiraiya is savoring this, this weakness of hers, the many sob-filled nights in which he holds her, no matter how perverse or diluted the pleasure is by gaining it through Tsunade's sorrow.

He hates himself for this, for watching her crumble down, bit by bit, in front of him, and only putting on a facade of friendship, not hungry yearning for something that he knows he can never have. But she's getting weaker, and she's ready to give up, and he knows that he's her pillar. Funny, how pillars always outlast the things they support.

It's only a matter of time, after all, and a slow, sanguine grin slinks its way across his face.

-

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When Tsunade first meets Dan, Jiraiya is more than a little happy, but his euphoria doesn't outweigh his melancholy, and for that he's ashamed. She needs a new tourniquet. Jiraiya's been serving as one for the past few months, and he's becoming bloody and threadbare, soaked through and through with mental viscera, and he's not sure if he can be patient for her love any longer.

He was glad for her, there was no denying that, but to him, Dan seemed like a pastiche of all things mediocre and ordinary. He reasons there was no point in having a lover she could best with her eyes closed and hands tied behind her back. He remembers thinking that she deserved so much better than an ordinary ninja such as him, thinking that he could give her that, then swallowing down the bitterness like sake and giving Dan a hand to shake, whispering in a buddy-buddy like tone that Dan'd better take care of his little teammate. He finds it slightly amusing that the other white-haired male never saw through the facade.

Tsunade beams up at him, and he thinks it may be worth it, but that thought is quickly trampled by ideas, angry ideas that no matter what he does he'll never be good enough, and he doesn't realize quite how depressed he is.

-

-

Jiraiya's students prove to be a liquor for him-a distraction and a beguilement meant to ease the pain of Tsunade's increasing time spend with Dan, or Orochimaru's graduating eccentricity. He spends so many hours mentoring and teaching, guiding and protecting, that he nearly stops registering the looks of adoration and pure lust his teammate and her lover shoot each-other.

But alcohol is a poor substitute for forgetting, and he knows that sooner or later, he's going to have to hold a decent conversation with Tsunade and her pathetic Dan, or confront Orochimaru about those nearly inhumane experiments. He also knows that the more you drink, the harder it is to stop.

So he pours his heart and his soul into one little blond-haired Genin, long after the child's other teammates have quit, watching him reach Chuunin before even Orochimaru's Anko, ruffling the eleven-year-old's scruffy mane with pride and sending a gloating glance to everyone in the vicinity.

-

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He's more than a bit happy when Dan dies, and that makes him hate himself even more, because Tsunade's beloved has just passed away, and he's fucking glad about it! At the funeral, he's wearing a solemn mask that even Orochimaru takes as truth, but inside the demon is shouting and crying with glee and self-loathing all in the same breath.

And so, Tsunade, sobbing, is once more sentenced to her teammate's arms, and like before, he's gleeful but despising himself for it. He knows exactly what to do the nights she comes knocking on his apartment door and ends up having to be cradled all night, but he's getting weary, and is starting to realize that he never really had a chance with her in the first place, and so he temporarily accepts the role of a caring friend instead of a carefully-concealed, wanton lover, and decides that he'll pursue her later, when she's not sad so he can't hate himself.

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After he realizes that he really shouldn't be chasing after Tsunade when she's in the state that she's in (_no, never, ever!_), he trains his student more, sending the boy to the rafters and straight through the barn shingles, shooting for the highest point in the sky.

And thus he thinks it's mostly his fault when Sarutobi picks his blue-eyed prodigy over Orochimaru, citing the Kiroi Senko's selflessness against the Sannin's utilitarianistic and nihilistic view-point.

Orochimaru defects, and Jiraiya follows, intent hell or high water apon getting his best friend back.

And when he's defeated, and lying in the mud, rain splattering on his face and washing out his wounds, he's staring up at Orochimaru's nearly monochromatic figure as he walks away.

Jiraiya wonders if this is all he really does in life- reaching out to grasp something before watching it illude him once more. He's been through this dozens of times with Tsunade, but that didn't really count, he guessed, because no matter what she was _still there _for a second chance, and now he's lost Orochimaru, too.

For some reason, he thinks that life is, in and of itself, unfair to the core, and wonders if this is how Tsunade felt when she lost Nawaki, and later Dan.

He doesn't know, and doesn't _want _to know, because what he _does _know is that it'll only make him more guilty in the end, and he thinks that he's a coward for avoiding the torment he so rightly deserves.

Some part of his mind disagrees with him there, reminding him of the tremendous pain making its way through his body from various wounds that he can't really see, because his vision is getting fuzzy, and he's thinking that he's going to die there.

And then he reminds himself that Tsunade wouldn't let that happen, because, whether he's happy with it or not, she believes they're friends, and unlike lovers, she doesn't let anything happen to them. He thinks he'd be better off dying, if he can't have her the way he wants, and finds it bitter and ironic that everything is always switched around all the ways he doesn't want it.

-

-

Tsunade comes across him after he's been lying in the beating October sun for a day and a half, and she kneels down beside him and she sighs, and for the first time he noticed the tiny wrinkles lining her forehead, and he realizes that they're getting old. She's thirty-nine and he's thirty-eight, and for some reason he feels like he should be the elder.

She tells him that he's really done it now, and for some reason the world goes into a red-scale from, he supposes, all the blood rushing to his head, and he looses conscious when he feels healing chakra seeping its way into his body.

-

-

The next month or so, Jiraiya and Tsunade reminisce about their lost teammate, and for a while he forgets his ultimate goal -_gaining Tsunade's love_- and decides that he's a little happy like that.

Still, Jiraiya has never been a man to give up on his abitions, and two months after Orochimaru defects, he resumes his pursuit. It's an infinite game of cat and mouse, and Jiraiya's not exactly sure which one he is.

-

-

She blushes slightly when he, on his student's dare, gives her roses on Valentines, and he feels a springing of hope that he hasn't had in quite a long time, and she smiles and says that she appreciates this, and that maybe they could go to dinner tonight, and Jiraiya feels like he's in heaven. He distinctly remembers getting the feeling that the Yondaime had knowingly set them up, and a smirk stretches his visage, knowing that he'd taught his pupil well.

He knows that now that he's got her hooked, it's best to reel her in slow and steady, or risk jerking her off the line all together.

And their budding relationship, something of little more than kisses and hugs and the occasional heavy make-out session on the couch at night, is shattered completely when the Kyuubi attacks.

Jiraiya looses his student, and Tsunade looses faith in the world.

-

-

He comes into their shared apartment and finds her packing her things. She tells him that she can't take being a ninja any more, and that she's taking Shizune -_too bad, he'd always been a bit fond of the girl, nothing like that horrible Dan at all_- and that she doesn't know when she's going to be returning.

Jiraiya is a man of self-preservation, but he never knew how he could have ever so willingly set himself up for heartbreak when she walks out the door, small suitcase in the pack over her back, half of their bank account in withdrawal notes folded into her pockets _-and it's not really fair that she's taking _half_, because she didn't even _earn _half; most of it is from Icha Icha_- and he just doesn't have the heart to stop her.

His heart feels like it's being punctured by the teeth of some horrible animal, and the hangover-headache from too much sake is like to someone driving drills into his head, and his cheeks sting from tears as if someone had drug claws down them, and he doesn't know why he's in such turmoil over this.

And he decides that he'd always been the mouse, after all.

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**Constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated, **as would any other type of review.


End file.
